The pleasant scent of blooming jasmine and fresh clover drifted through the vast subterranean cavern.
Beneath the towering emerald canopy of the three-mile-high World-Tree, twenty-five thousand freed Forge-Dwarves stood in proud, rigid formation.
Their broad chests were bare, their thick beards freshly washed in the bubbling mountain springs. Every single dwarf held an old iron tong or a chipped chisel, their eyes burning with the fierce, unquenchable hunger to strike hot metal once more.
For twenty years in this dark pit, they had refused to break their ancient craftsman code.
Even when Warden Xiong Ba’s overseers whipped them bloody, they refused to forge shoddy weapons. If an imperial general demanded brittle iron, the dwarves secretly reworked the alloy until it met honorable standards, taking extra lashes for the delay. They were craftsmen born of stone and fire. To an honest dwarf, making junk was a greater crime than death.
Forge-King Bronn stood at their head, his muscular arms folded across his broad chest like two knotted iron pillars.
“Boss Lin!” Bronn roared, his gravelly voice carrying across the entire grove like rolling thunder. “My boys don’t want soft beds or silk cushions! Dwarves don’t sleep well unless there is the sound of an anvil ringing in their ears! Give us divine hammers, give us star-iron, and we’ll forge weapons that will make the gods weep!”
